5Next day Dorothy began altering her programme in accordance with Mrs Creevy’s orders. The first lesson of the day was handwriting, and the second was geography.
‘That’ll do, girls,’ said Dorothy as the funereal clock struck ten. ‘We’ll start our geography lesson now.’
The girls flung their desks open and put their hated copybooks away with audible sighs of relief. There were murmurs of ‘Oo, jography! Good!’ It was one of their favourite lessons. The two girls who were ‘monitors’ for the week, and whose job it was to clean the blackboard, collect exercise books and so forth (children will fight for the privilege of doing jobs of that kind), leapt from their places to fetch the half-finished contour map that stood against the wall. But Dorothy stopped them.
‘Wait a moment. Sit down, you
